(Hat tip to "journalist" "Jeff Gannon" who thought we'd not be interested in covering this story! Wrong again, old boy! Thanks for the tip!)

Apparently, it's neither a case of "sour grapes" nor "sore losers" when Republicans challenge elections that they reportedly lost. That's only the case when Democrats charge irregularities or illegalities in an election. And, of course, when it's a Republican whose ox has been gored, the GOP uses every available means to fight the results of the election, and the courts and the legislatures usually play along. And nobody bothers to call them "tin-foil hat conspiracy theorists." Go figure.

Yesterday, in Tennessee, three poll workers were indicted for adding ballots to an election for the state Senate in which a Democrat won by 13 votes.

Of course, the GOP has fought that election tooth and nail, as the GOP, unlike Democrats, always do. And they've even managed to convince the state Senate to overturn the election due to their "allegations" of "irregularities."

As you'll see in the report from AP, the idea of poll workers gaming an election has once again occured. That, despite many absurd claims of late from Diebold spokesperson David Bear to NEWSWEEK, NYTimes and others to this effect...

"For there to be a problem here, you're basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software," [Diebold spokesman, David Bear] said. "I don't believe these evil elections people exist."

Believe it, bitch.

Or this equally absurd comment from San Diego County Registrar Mikel Haas who discounted concerns of sending easily-hacked Diebold voting machines home for overnights with poll workers just before the Busby/Bilbray election. Even though the machines are incredibly vulnerable to tampering, and storage in poll workers' cars cannot be considered secure --- by Haas' own admission --- there is little to worry about when it comes to fears of poll workers doing anything untoward. As he made clear to me, "you'd have to want to commit a felony, which knocks out most of our poll workers."

Despite plenty of recent examples of "evil and nefarious elections officials" who were more than willing to "commit a felony," it looks like the story out of Tennessee yesterday makes the case against Haas and Bear's feigned Pollyanna-isms. Again.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - Three poll workers accused of casting ballots in the name of dead voters were among six people indicted on charges of violating election laws in a state Senate race, a prosecutor announced Wednesday.
...
Democrat Ophelia Ford was certified the winner over Republican Terry Roland by 13 votes last September. The state Senate overturned the election this year amid allegations of irregularities.
...
None of those indicted worked for either of the campaigns and neither candidate has been accused of wrongdoing, officials said.

In regard to the "dead voters" who were mentioned above, by the way, from my reading of the story --- to the dismay of the Rightwingers pushing for disenfranchising Photo ID laws, such as fake journalist "Jeff Gannon" who first brought this story to my attention --- since this was a matter of poll workers stuffing the ballot box, no amount of Photo ID requirements would have kept them from being able to do so.

The Photo ID issue remains a ploy to keep Democratic-leaning voters from voting. Millions of them. Period. And until any of these so-called "conservatives" who act as if they give a damn about "ballot integrity" insist on Photo ID requirements for Absentee and Military ballots, their disingenuous arguments will be seen as little more than hollow, un-American rhetoric.

I'll be curious as to how this plays out. My prediction is that the Republicans will get to dismiss all ballots they call "suspect", which will end in a net result of the Republican winning by 20 - 30 votes (just enough to make it look like the stuffing did it, but not enough to look like they are pulling more than needed).

Do the Dems get to scour the ballots too? make sure no "dead people" voted for the Repubilcan?

Driving through the state of Washington when a Democrat had just accidentally won for Governor, there were billboards bitching about it the whole way up Interstate 5. "Democrats' Motto: Vote early and often," that sort of thing. Republicans sure do like to mock Democrats when we have concerns, even righteous ones, about voting integrity, but, boy, the caterwauling from their side when their sundry little insurance measures have failed to yield up their candidate gets really awful. I could not even find a radio station that wasn't going on and on about this. I would hope it's settled by now, and the billboards down, but do Republicans really put their money where their mouths are more than Democrats, or is it really just because they have more money to do it?

you will see a lot of familiar faces
When some people shift their belief systems they go from the left camp to the right,or vice versa, using the gates to each camp respectivley
Alot of these radical morter forkers lept right over the fence, just one example is This guy

So here I am reporting in from Tennessee with the story. I'm in Nashville, the capital, Music City; while the story is from Memphis, home a da blues, and a certain King of Rock N Roll.
Harold Ford, Jr. the current Congressman (young - came in to his dad's seat at the age of 26 - did the keynote at the 2000 Dem convention), now running for Senate - Frist's seat; has a family that has had political power in Memphis for some time now. Junior's dad was run out of his Congressional seat for some kinda wrongdoing (before my time, I'm not sure what it was...) but is still respected in his neighborhood. Ole man Harold's brother John was been in the state legislature for many years and was known as a wild and crazy guy - multiple families in multiple homes - waiving guns around - threats - corruption - you wouldn't wanna party with him...
Anyway, the Feds nailed ole John Ford seeking bribes and threatening murder last year - the news hit the papers the day of his nephew's Senate announcement (what coincidental timing!) - and ran John outta the state Senate.
STAY WITH ME HERE...
So, in the special election for John Ford's seat, sister Ophelia Ford won the Dem primary with a slim margin (less than 20 votes) and the loser screamed for a recount. Guess what? NO PAPER BALLOTS TO RECOUNT!
Then, in the general election, Ophelia won by 13 votes over a Pub who later screamed for a recount. Guess what? That's right. NO what? Sing it loud chirrin! PAPER BALLOTS!
And so there was no recount. The Pubs got mad, as they are trying mightily to take over the General Assembly. They complained about the graveyard vote, despite the fact of it being a Ford tradition, and had poor Ophelia unseated from the Senate. Now, had there been paper ballots, the whole problem mighta been avoided if one or the other candidates had a big enough margin of votes to ignore the graveyard stuff.
Looks like poor Ophelia will have to try to steal the seat again this fall. Maybe she can find some hackers so she won't have to use the dead folks. They're now using brand new machines made by - TA-DA! - Diebold! Machines that have no - sing it one mo tahm chirrin! - PAPER BALLOTS!
And you never know who those dead folks are gonna vote for anyway...
There you have the "for true" story from here in TN.

Brad - a little bit of sarcastic humor undertones this thread a little unlike you to interject. This is funny shit but maybe it's time for a little R n'R this weekend because you are generally the cooooooool-eh one.
Good work once again!

Lets have a quick review. If these bushit republidem fascists above the law cannot cheat to win elections using their electronic voting machines and massive humanistic fraud, how will they convince the people who are ignorant, in the dark, or believe their mass media lies that this criminal regime of destructive murderers should legitimately remain in office?

Rove should be thinking about this from a public stockade turn hangman's noose. INSTEAD he'll be consult Bush and Cheney at the W.H. dinner table.

Yes, Floridiot, who'da thunk Paul Wolfowitz was once a starry-eyed liberal? He was. Radicals have the problem of radically changing their minds when things don't go their way. There is a theory out there that liberalism is the cause of all the debauchment of society... and, it's a pretty good theory, except it's more like the cause of the openness of it, because we all know that conservatives whup our asses at debauchery in every measure. Without getting into what's debauchery of society and what's not, radicals too often have severe ego problems, which is what cannot help but find radicalism appealing. When the will to have things their way is that intense, fascism is the only resort. If you want to take all the money and power away from the world full of dim bulbs, you resort to it. If you want everyone to do exactly as you'd have them, you resort to it. Basically, control freaks can sometimes become so obsessed it energizes them to rise within government, or military ranks, where they have a very good chance of actually getting the power to appease their dysfunctional egos. Control freaks tend to make more money, too, because they do not let little things like ethics stand in the way of their goals.

The good of radicalism is that stuff gets DONE. The evil of it is that it is so frequently harmful to way too many humans.

A sane society would screen these maniacs out before they rose to any position where it could cause such massive harm, and they would also boot officials out if they ever started to cause such massive harm.

What do YOU suggest for taking ballots and equipment to the polling place on Election Day? Please put your logistics hat on, and analyze it for us. It may be nice to develop some sort of plan that provide for secure transport and chain of custody from the elections office to the polling place, instead of complaining about how ballots are distributed and taken home by the poll workers, which incidentially, has been occurring for the last fifty years, well before electronic voting Brad.

Wow this is crazy. 13 vote victory. Shouldn't there be an automatic recount if victory is within 1% or something. Speaking of lawyers, are they not mostly republican? I think democrats are getting bum legal advice.

Please check out Politics as Usual, card game-
Buy it share it with a friend! Thanks.

If all it takes is one person to affect all the results for the entire election by tampering with one voting machine, Mikel Haas has admitted that some poll workers are willing to commit a felony:

"by Haas' own admission — there is little to worry about when it comes to fears of poll workers doing anything untoward. As he made clear to me, "you'd have to want to commit a felony, which knocks out most of our poll workers."

"Knocks out most of our poll workers" - but not ALL of our pollworkers.

C'mon, you know there is no money to spend for security. They spent it all to get those superbly hackable voting machines. And, anyway, too much security doesn't allow one to take full advantage of those hackability features!

The most obvious solution would be the simplest: if there aren't any machines, there wouldn't be a need to store them in between the main warehouse and the precinct. That would take care of the problem of not only who physically secures them and where, but also where the machines are held during all those days of the year when they aren't in use, which also costs the state mucho dinero. When the government is the cash cow, all kinds of companies, primary vendors and those providing peripheral essential support services, are reluctant to step away from the milking machine.

Alternatively, I've heard the suggestion somewhere that the machines be stored at local police stations overnight. Overall, it seems logical to rely on the integrity of a career police officer --- a full-time employee of the city or state who can be tracked down pretty easily and who has gone through background checks and training --- over a temporary volunteer citizen pollworker.

As we all know too well, law enforcement has its fair share of unscrupulous personnel, just like all organizations. The point would be to determine which group of people and which security measures offer the most reliable and high quality chance of succeeeding in the goals of security and integrity.

Poll workers and election officials do yeoman's work in administering and conducting our elections. THANK YOU. It isn't fair to put burdens of security on low-paid volunteers when so much is at stake.

Seems to me that solutions shouldn't be difficult to find when we stop putting "cheap" and "convenient" the top o' the priority list... Poll workers, bless their hearts, get up at 4 or 5am to set up the machines and polling stations, and work well into the night as it is. In the past, adding seemingly burdensome security procedures might have seemed unfair and likely to turn off volunteer participation.

And we NEED volunteers, lots of 'em, to get the job done well.

We want to have to the best possible election system, one that encourages the highest numbers of citizen involvement and honest participation, and guarantees the highest possbile integrity and accuracy.

But first we have to let go of the way we've always done it in the past.

A consortium of newspaper publishers went down to
Florida to examine the vote in the state to determine who indeed won the 2000 Presidential election down there. By all methods by all way no matter what technique used to recount the vote down there in
Florida,.. Gore won the election,.. Gore should have been in the White House and not Bush. Why do few in the general population realize this ? Because the travesty/tragedy of 9/11 was upon us and the media
down played the reality. They were reluctant to divulge this fact,.. for fear that Bush's authority would be undercut,.. so the media decided it was best to bury and conceal the reality. The shenanigans of Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris et al put GWBush in the White House,.. he was not there by the will of voter intent.

A portion from the web site of Tom Hartman,.. detailing this issue,.. the specific NYT article is referred to if you care to Google it,..

In the 2000 case, The New York Times, on November 12, 2001, published a story summarizing the work of the newspaper consortium that spent nearly a year counting all the ballots in the 2000 Florida election. They found that a statewide recount - the process the Florida Supreme Court had mandated and which had begun when George W. Bush sued before the US Supreme Court to stop the recount - "could have produced enough votes to tilt the election his [Gore's] way, no matter what standard was chosen to judge voter intent."

The Times analysis further showed that had "spoiled" ballots - ballots normally punched but "spoiled" because the voter also wrote onto the ballot the name of the candidate - been counted, the results were even more spectacular. While 35,176 voters wrote in Bush's name after punching the hole for him, 80,775 wrote in Gore's name while punching the hole for Gore. Katherine Harris decided that these were "spoiled" ballots, and ordered that none of them should be counted. Many were from African American districts, where older and often broken machines were distributed, causing voters to write onto their ballots so their intent would be unambiguous. As the Times added in a sidebar article with a self-explanatory title by Ford Fessenden, in the 2000 election in Florida: "Ballots Cast by Blacks and Older Voters Were Tossed in Far Greater Numbers."

The November, 2001, New York Times article went on to document how, in a statewide recount, there was no possible doubt that Al Gore won Florida in 2000:

"If all the ballots had been reviewed under any of seven single standards [all the ones that were used by either party], and combined with the results of an examination of overvotes, Mr. Gore would have won, by a very narrow margin. For example, using the most permissive ''dimpled chad'' standard, nearly 25,000 additional votes would have been reaped, yielding 644 net new votes for Mr. Gore and giving him a 107-vote victory margin. ...
"Using the most restrictive standard --- the fully punched ballot card --- 5,252 new votes would have been added to the Florida total, producing a net gain of 652 votes for Mr. Gore, and a 115-vote victory margin.

"All the other combinations likewise produced additional votes for Mr. Gore, giving him a slight margin over Mr. Bush, when at least two of the three coders agreed."

And yet all of this information was buried well after the 17th paragraph of the story, which carried the baffling headline "Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote."

As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pointed out to me in an interview on my radio program on June 2, the reason the Times chose to bury the lede of their story and instead imply in the headline and first few paragraphs that Bush had legitimately won the 2000 election was because just a month earlier the US had been struck on 9/11 and The Times' publisher didn't want to undermine the president's legitimacy in a time of national crisis.

In a case eerily prescient of the Times' 2004 decision to delay reporting on Bush's illegal wiretapping of Americans until after the election, the Times' publisher and editors decided in November of 2001 that that wasn't a good time to reveal that Bush was an illegitimate president and that Al Gore actually had won the election, both by the majority vote and the electoral vote. (Although, to their credit, at least they reported that Gore got the most votes in Florida, as did The Washington Post, which also ran the story but buried it deep within an article that similarly seemed to imply Bush won legitimately. USA Today passed over it altogether, simply saying that Bush won.)

The big question for today is whether media history will repeat itself. Will the mainstream media do any first-source on-the-ground investigative reporting into the theft of the 2004 election, or simply treat it as a political "difference of opinion"? And if they do engage in the hard work of first-source reporting as the Times and their consortium did in 2001, and the results again come back that Bush is an illegitimate president, will they again bury that fact seventeen paragraphs into a story with a misleading headline and opening as they did when, in 2001, they counted the ballots and found that Al Gore got more votes than George W. Bush did in Florida?

So far, it seems that the mainstream media is going to pass on doing any of their own first-source reporting, while Kenneth Blackwell begins the process of destroying evidence, which he'll be legally authorized to do in the next few months.

For example, on Friday, June 3, 2006, CNN briefly interviewed Kennedy, but treated the story as a political one rather than an example of investigative reporting. Instead of interviewing Kennedy about the details and substance of the story, Wolf Blitzer had on with Kennedy the infamous Terry Holt, spokesman for the Bush/Cheney campaign and a likely co-conspirator in the crime, instead of an investigative reporter who had examined Kennedy's evidence. Just as when Holt was confronted by Anderson Cooper in August of 2004 about the administration's manipulation of terror alerts during the campaign, Holt similarly ridiculed the idea of Republican election crimes, and Blitzer didn't challenge him - or let Kennedy finish most of his sentences.

Three days after Kennedy's story broke in Rolling Stone, a Google news search shows no national "mainstream" media having picked up the story as a serious news report, or having done any follow-up reporting into the issues he raises whatsoever. An email reply from an editor at The Seattle Times, asking why they're not covering the story, is characteristic of the response from many other national newspapers: "We subscribe to many news services for our national and foreign coverage. However, Rolling Stone is not one of them."

The question should not be, "Is this a story we can quote or should investigate because it was first reported in a major newspaper?" Instead, it should be, "Is there credible evidence that the election of 2004 was stolen by Republicans engaged in openly criminal activity?" And, of course, "Are they preparing to do the same in 2006 and 2008?"

Our national mega-corporate-owned media - now so driven by ad dollars that sensationalized "missing white girls" trump real news - will only respond if enough of us raise enough questions with their editors and writers. Or if more of our members of congress (you can call your congressperson or senator at 202 225-3121) - particularly the "media darlings" like Joe Biden and (gulp) Chuck Hagel, who are ubiquitous on the Sunday talking-head shows - begin to speak out with the rare courage Congressman John Conyers showed when he pursued his investigation despite a virtual news blackout from the mainstream media.

Maybe I'm in an optimistic mood, but it seems to me that this could actually help if R. Kennedy Jr. files a lawsuit, which he says he will do. We all know dems. have been guilty of election tampering but the repubs. are criminals now. I don't think they always have been...The two parties used to be civil and balance each other somewhat. Of course, we still have the Karma for what we did to the American Indians and people all over the world who had a resource that we wanted. I wish every member of the senate dem. and repub who didn't vote to set a timetable to get out of Iraq could be replaced. It's all about stealing their oil. I believe in Karma...what goes around comes around or whatever you want to call it. The chickens are coming home to roost.

Notice, Ricky, HCOCDR, etc... DO NOT COMMENT on a Brad Blog article about REPUBLICANS raising a stink about an election they think was stolen. NO COMMENTS! And don't forget about Rossi dragging Gregoire through court for months in Washington! That one is the ultimate "sore loser" one, for length of time dragging it out and not conceding.

BUT...I admit, at least the Republicans F***ING FIGHT to overturn elections. Busbly conceded, Kerry/Edwards conceded (and the same day, too, I might add), and it's all too familiar, Democrats not fighting close elections and, in fact, conceding at the speed of light.

I do admire the way Republicans fight to overturn close elections. Too bad they're for the rich and corporate America, or I'd root for them, just because they have such conviction. It's F***ED up conviction, but it's conviction.

"If you don't read BradBlog every day, then you should at least skim today's story. Brad covers a story passed onto him by Jeff Gannon --- yes, that Jeff Gannon --- concerning a race for state senate in Tennessee."

If two laptops can be stolen from a federal government
employee's automobile,.. I suppose it is not illogical to assume the same could be done with an e-voting machine in a county employee's car. The equipment could be likewise tampered with or stolen.

You are absolutely correct, the republican dictatorship has more convictions than any other political party.

And it is not over yet. Recent testimony is:

A bipartisan Senate report released on Thursday documents more than $5 million in payments to Ralph Reed, the former director of the Christian Coalition and a longtime Republican Party strategist, from an influence-peddling scheme by the corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff on behalf of Indian tribe casinos, the New York Times will report Friday

Get over it dems, you will never have more convictions than the repubs. As The Dick (apologies to The Donald) says, "I am doin such a heckuva job fightin for faith based elections, we got everything dicked up real good".

This is another link to a Wikipedia article wich shows that a statewide recount would have shown Gore a winner, but recounts in the limited counties Gore requested would have favored Bush. This is also how I recall things I read back then. Of course there is no adjustment here for voters that were discouraged from voting or illegally removed from the voting rolls.

I was listening to Thom Hartman on the radio,... a caller phoned in to debunk the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. -
Rolling Stone article,.. as sour grapes and whining
by a sore looser liberal. Hartman responded that the media did an analysis of the Florida vote,.. doing a recount that the SCOTUS would not permit. The results of that recount indicated Gore won the vote in Florida,.. in 2000 not Bu$$h. Gore won the right to be in the White House,.. as determined by the will of the voters. The media buried that fact beyond notice of most people.

--------------

BlueBear 2,.. thank you for providing a link to follow up this information,.. I did not notice the request to provide it until just now.

Well, that's just it! I haven't. [cringe] Has Gannon a web page for more than his "escort" service? [Don't answer.] I was unaware that he ever did anything more than pose as a journalist, with miraculous security clearance, for the WHPC. [Want to stay that way, if possible.] Does the guy actually write stuff? [Don't answer.] And if so, what kind of fortitude must it take to read it? [Superman's or Limbaugh's] Having slept on it, I came to the conclusion that somebody must have told Brad what Gannon was saying, somewhere, and it just turned out to be funny/wrong.